Friday, June 12, 2015

HUD asks for a 9% budget increase to fundamentally transform America's suburbs

Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) seems to be about the business of fundamentally transforming America with new regulations that will move the deserving poor out of inner cities and into the affluent suburbs probably to assure a broader distributions of used beverage containers and plastic shopping bags which always grace every urban landscape. According to the Hill the good folks at HUD view themselves as foot soldiers in the good fight to end economic segregation.
The regulations would use grant money as an incentive for communities to build affordable housing in more affluent areas while also taking steps to upgrade poorer areas with better schools, parks, libraries, grocery stores and transportation routes as part of a gentrification of those communities.
“HUD is working with communities across the country to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a HUD spokeswoman said. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”
Gentrification? Well a country sure can't have too much gentrification. Perhaps we could have a patron saint of gentrification.
When is enough, enough? In the video below Rep. Jeb Hensarling notes that HUD has spent $1.6 trillion or $13,000 for every American household since its creation in 1965. To its credit HUD has managed to double the cost of housing for everyone and raise rents one third measured in constant dollars over that same time span but the poverty has remained the same. Modest result do not beget modest ambitions. HUD is asking for a 9% budget increase. From the tone of Mr. Hensarling remarks I would make that a long shot.

2 comments:

  1. They're probably just trying to spread the murder around, right?

    I was interested in the way they used the word "gentrification." I have a young friend who lives in Chicago who had only heard the word spat out, as if gentrification was a destructive element that
    is decimating "urban" neighborhoods. She thought it was a white plot to take back cities and drive black people out.

    We should probably put another billion dollars into Baltimore.

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    1. Maybe you have something there. We have white people in the suburbs hell bent on gentrifying the cities while the blacks want to move to the suburbs. We'll see how Democratic voting suburbs like this idea.

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